I think you're right. To do what you're needing to do, you need the five NICs.
Hey, maybe not! Going on duncan brown's comment about spending $75 per tenant on a small Netgear router, those do masquerading, right? So if I went that route, then they each have their individual subnet but *I* get all traffic coming from a single IP address! At that point I *can* simply plug all tenants into the switch, and do traffic shaping/limiting based on the IP address, and only use two NIC's in the central server. Eliminates the DHCP requirement, and I can also filter by MAC address for additional security.
I'm starting to like that idea more and more.
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
